Klimt’s drawings have to be seen almost exclusively in connection with his paintings. Only about 4,000 – mostly sketches and a handful of watercolours – from the vast number of nude drawings that were produced in the painter’s atelier have survived until today. These have meanwhile been published in a multivolume catalogue of works. Few drawings are signed since Klimt did not intend them for public consumption. Today these floating arrangements of lines are the proud property of museums or much sought-after objects on the art market. In addition, Klimt used a large number of sketchbooks. Unfortunately, these were burnt in 1945 in a fire at the apartment of Emilie Flöge, who inherited part of the Klimt estate after his death in 1918.
Stylistically, Klimt’s drawings, like his paintings, represent the transition from historicism through Jugendstil to his first early expressionist works. The early phase of his development can be seen in his final drawings for “Allegorien und Embleme” (Allegories and Emblems) published by Martin Gerlach in 1881-1884, but also in studies for the music salon at the Palais Dumba in 1898/99. Towards the end of the 1890s, the presence of the so-called “shading style” made itself felt. Parallel lines running from top right to bottom left like “graphic rain” characterize this effective way of drawing which alternates between light and dark.